


sworn word may strengthen quaking heart

by rain_sleet_snow



Series: does the walker choose the path [1]
Category: Old Kingdom - Garth Nix, Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Blue Plague, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Intrigue, Prequel, Royalty, Scheming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-01
Updated: 2019-09-01
Packaged: 2020-10-04 19:15:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20476169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rain_sleet_snow/pseuds/rain_sleet_snow
Summary: Three oaths sworn when Queen Padmé took the throne in Belisaere.





	sworn word may strengthen quaking heart

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SecondStarOnTheLeft](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SecondStarOnTheLeft/gifts).

> Another piece for the palace intrigue prompts! This one was SecondStarontheLeft's idea: she asked for some plotting around the early years of Padmé's reign.
> 
> Yes, the title quote is Lord of the Rings.

The festivities of Queen Padmé’s coronation are far from complete when Lord Palpatine, smiling kindly at the young queen and claiming exhaustion, begs leave to depart. She gives him permission with a gentle grace and he takes his leave. Let the young folk make merry over sculpted ice and gilded displays of magic and the finest feast the kitchens can offer their new queen; let the city dwellers dance in the street, and fireworks burst in the sky, and fountains run red with wine, and let all know that this is only the midway point of a fortnight's rejoicing, for the plague is past and the dead are counted, and though many are lost, some are not. 

A lanky lad with a patrician nose and his flat-faced friend stumble past, arm in arm, drunk and laughing; a Wallmaker in yellow and gold, Palpatine doesn't know the name, but Flat-face he recognises. The Abhorsen-in-Waiting, Galen Erso, dressed in black sprinkled with Abhorsen's keys, because the one colour no-one will wear in this city freshly scrubbed clean is blue. They all know far too well the sickly shade that spread over the faces of the dying, the cyanosing lips of the almost-lost.

A nice, macabre touch. Palpatine was pleased with it. And now there is a child queen on the throne - courageous, and she bears her burden well for a fourteen-year-old, but a child all the same, and she will be led by him, whether she knows it or not. At the moment, she trusts him, and that’s a good start.

Torchbearers light his way back to his townhouse and his servants receive him. He tips the lightboys generously, and tells them to enjoy the party. After dressing for the night and receiving a cup of restorative mulled cider, he dismisses his servants likewise. For they must all rejoice.

And so too will his lordship, watching the patterns of lanterns and fireworks echo across the black water of Belisaere's harbour. For the next stage of a long-dormant game has begun; and he swears, here and now, that he will win.

***

Queen Padmé is a ruler, and yet she is also an excitable teenager. Her handmaidens, however stern of face and temperament, are children too. The cloistered garden at the centre of their rooms would be perfectly silent, distant from the ongoing parties as they are, if it weren't for the audible giggling coming from behind closed doors. 

Obi-Wan doesn't grudge it to them. He just feels as if he'll never be that light-hearted again. 

He folds his cloak about his elbows and sighs. Qui-Gon would have liked to see the parties. He felt the devastation of the Blue Plague keenly, all the more so for being instructed to carry the then-princess out of its reach, away from where his strength in the Charter and strength of arm could be of use in combating the sickness. Of course, after meeting Anakin, he took it all as fated…

Obi-Wan refocuses his mind on the moment. The charcoal dark of the sky, the flowering shrubs and fruit trees of the garden. His guard duty. His companion in that guard duty.

Master Yoda comes roughly up to Obi-Wan's waist, but the Southerling's presence is no less powerful for that. Obi-Wan can practically hear the pointed stare, reconstruct the pattern of the heavy green tattoos from memory.

"Troubled, you sound," Master Yoda observes.

"I've had better months," Obi-Wan says. It's been less than thirty days since he pulled marks from the Charter to burn Qui-Gon's body, and found himself so weak that he needed Anakin's small hand on his wrist to complete the spell. His mind revolts against realising just how little time it's been, how long he has still to go. He is tired enough to lay down his burdens and sleep for a year. But there are so many people counting on him.

His eyes drift to the doors off the cloisters. There are no other guards tonight; who would dare attack the queen in his presence and Master Yoda's? They are singing stories of him in the streets, a Charter mage with no Abhorsen blood at all who fought a necromancer and won. It makes him want to be sick.

"I worry for the queen," he says, for it is the easiest thing to say. "It will be a long road to her majority."

"But she has her sworn men, to stand with her," says Master Yoda. It may be meant as comfort. "And the Charter, in her veins."

But how much, Obi-Wan wonders, does that second protection really mean? It meant so much to Qui-Gon, and he is dead.

_Sworn men._

Obi-Wan breathes in; breathes out. Accepts the charge.

"Yes," he says, and swears his oath.

***

It's dark and quiet and still just before dawn, when Sabé and her fellow handmaidens rise. They are children who have slept little and should sleep more, but they are also ladies to a queen, and she needs them. 

The bedrooms are perfectly quiet, as is one of the sitting rooms - a private one, Sabé knows, not for audiences of any kind, and as such it doesn't matter that the pillows are scattered, the furniture awry, half-eaten platters of fruit and half-drained jugs of cordial lying on sideboards at random. They were all half-hysterical last night. The plague is over, the queen is dead, the queen is Padmé, be joyful, be joyful. 

The Abhorsen's servant, the cat-who-is-not, looked over the festivities and laughed last night; he looked at Sabé with those acid green eyes and said: "Everyone and everything has a time to die. But it suits you all to forget that, doesn't it?"

Sabé walked away then, but she cannot forget it now. Her hands are cold and all her blue dresses are burned. She did them at the same time as she did Padmé's.

Padmé: it's Cordé who spots her first.

The queen is standing by the open shutters, which cover a great window with a parapet that runs up to Padmé's waist. There are heavy brocade curtains, and filmier silk ones, for any eventuality; they used to be green, because that was Queen Ruwee's favourite colour, and now they are purple, because that's Padmé's. They are both pushed back now, whatever colour they are, and Padmé in her lilac linen nightdress is staring out over the palace gardens, to the sky and the sea.

She looks both more a child and more a queen than she did in her coronation gown.

"Good morning," Padmé says. 

"Your majesty," Sabé says, since everyone else is struck dumb.

"I couldn't sleep," Padmé explains.

"You should have woken one of us," Rabé says - the eldest, and she can't resist the instinct to scold just slightly.

The queen smiles and looks away. "I thought," she says, and then falls silent. "Well. No matter." She turns her back to the balcony and clasps her hands in front of her, like she's preparing for a pronouncement. They wait.

"Last night," Padmé says, "you swore an oath to me as queen."

They nod, they murmur. Yes, they swore.

"Today I would like you to swear an oath by me. To stand by me, whatever may come, and hold me to truth and justice." Padmé's voice does not shake, but her hands grip a little more tightly. "For I will need all my friends."

In the silence and stillness her eyes are on Sabé. Sabé, who is one day older, Sabé, so like her they could pass for twins, Sabé, who remained with her in the flight north with Qui-Gon Jinn, Sabé who has never faltered yet.

Sabé who will not falter now, however much she fears such an oath, sworn by children. For they are all still children.

She steps forward, and kneels at Padmé's bare feet, rests her fingers in Padmé's cupped palms.

"Count on me, Padmé," Sabé says. "From now until the ending of our days."


End file.
